Monday Morning Update 1/30/23

Top News

The New York Times profiles Paradigm, which launched last week after raising $203 million in a Series A funding round.

The company has developed a platform that it says will merge the disciplines of clinical care and research. It does this by transforming EHR information into clinical trials data. It also helps doctors match patients to active studies.

Reader Comments

From Natty Boh: “Re: mistake in the 1/27 post. You confused Inspirata with Imprivata. It was Imprivata that acquired Caradigm.” The post is correct. Imprivata acquired just the identity management business of Caradigm from GE Healthcare in October 2017. Inspirata acquired the actual company Caradigm, including its core business of analytics and population health tools, from GE Healthcare in June 2018. Caradigm was formed as a 50-50 joint venture between Microsoft and GE Healthcare in 2011, with Microsoft bowing out in 2016. Caradigm’s identity management business came from Microsoft, which had acquired Sentillion in 2009, renamed it Vergence, and then rolled it into Caradigm along with the ExpreSSO single sign-on product. That’s what Imprivata acquired.

From I’ll RxPass: “Re: Amazon’s flat-fee monthly generic drug RxPass. Odd that patients in eight states can’t participate even though Amazon Pharmacy operates in them.” Odder still is that customers who are covered by Medicare, Medicaid, or any other government-sponsored insurance aren’t eligible, which is strange since it’s a cash-only, unsubsidized business. Although you can probably just answer “no” to the prompt knowing they can’t check – it’s easier to demand proof of existence rather than of non-existence.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Quite a few poll respondents will not be able to take jobs with specific companies when they leave their current one. AT reasonably opines that while non-competes might be justifiable for employees who voluntarily take a job with a competitor, those restrictions should be waived if the employee is involuntarily shown the door for whatever reason. Frank suggests negotiating such agreements to require the company to pay severance for whatever amount of time they don’t want you working for a competitor, or failing to convince them to do that, at least insist that the agreement be narrowed down to performing specific tasks rather than broadly excluding even unrelated jobs with competitors.

New poll to your right or here: What are your plans for attending HIMSS23 in person? My supply chain of enthusiasm has been disrupted, but at some point I’ll need to choose go/no go and will probably end up fast-roping into Chicago for a day or two in the exhibit hall as a habit of seasonal migration.

We’re probably all sick of people showing off their ChatGPT results like proud parents, but it’s still fun to see the result of creative requests. It offered this when I asked it to develop a short story plot about a hospital computer programmer turned criminal:

Title: The Code Criminal

The story revolves around a hospital computer programmer named Jack who is highly skilled and efficient at his job. He is well respected by his colleagues and patients alike. But little do they know, Jack is not who he seems to be. In his off hours, Jack uses his knowledge of the hospital’s computer systems to carry out criminal activities. He steals sensitive patient information and sells it to the highest bidder on the black market. One day, the hospital’s IT department discovers that patient data is being leaked and they track it back to Jack’s computer. They confront him, and Jack is forced to flee the hospital. As Jack is on the run, he realizes that the stolen patient information has been used to carry out a string of identity theft crimes, causing harm to innocent people. Jack realizes the gravity of his actions and decides to make amends. He returns to the hospital and confesses his crimes to the authorities. He offers to help them track down the people who bought the stolen information from him, and use his skills to secure the hospital’s computer systems. In the end, Jack is sentenced to prison, but he feels a sense of redemption for using his skills to make things right. The hospital is able to recover from the breach, and patients are able to trust the hospital with their personal information once again.

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.

People

AirStrip CEO Alan Portela announces that he will leave the company after 12 years.

Industry long-timer Paul Valentine (Ncontracts) joins KPi-Tech Services as president.

Michael Johnson (Enlace Health) joins Rialtic as chief growth officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Orbita announces Blaze, which provides care-finding and chatbot services to provider websites.

Optum Rx launches Price Edge for its pharmacy benefits manager customers, which shows customers the lowest available cash-only price for generic drugs along with what they would pay using insurance and then applies their payment toward their deductible when they buy.

Government and Politics

FDA Commissioner Robert Califf, MD says in a Society for Clinical Trials opinion piece that post-market clinical research is disaggregated and often fails to answer clinical care and public health questions. He recommends (a) integrating data from EHRs and wearables; (b) paying doctors and patients to participate in trials; and (c) developing policies for ethical data sharing.

Other

University of Iowa surgeons remove a condom-wrapped banana from the small intestine of a man who, as paraphrased from the medical journal article by a British newspaper, an “unnamed bloke” had “gulped the fruity contraceptive whole during what he claimed was a fit of rage” and then was “unable to go to the loo.” The authors note that they had it easy compared to most cases of “body packing” where the condom or balloon contains cocaine or other drugs that, if mishandled, could kill the patient. I can’t envision the degree of rage that is required to swallow a whole banana, or why the swallower would expect to create an improved situation by doing so.

Sponsor Updates

• Netsmart’s GehriMed EHR earns ONC Health IT 2015 Edition Cures Update certification via the Drummond Group.
• Verato publishes a new case study, “GRIPA: Next-Generation EMPI for Healthier, Happier Community.”
• Pivot Point Consulting A Vaco Company, describes how it implemented Epic for the 29,000 employees of UW Medicine.

Blog Posts

• How Technology Drives Game-Changing Workforce Satisfaction (Netsmart)
• Healthcare IT Trends You Can Expect in 2023 (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Understanding the Shift to Value-Based Care for Pharmacy, Part 1 (OmniSys)
• What is a Clinical Communication and Collaboration Platform? (PerfectServe)
• PINC AI Data: Urgent Hospital Care for Opioid Use Disorders Varies Heavily by State (Premier)
• Patient scheduling tools, tips, and templates (Relatient)
• Hospital smart rooms: What to consider (Sonifi Health)
• Enhance customer experience through your hospital contact center (Spok)
• Data Privacy & Healthcare Cybersecurity: Addressing the Growing Challenge for Healthcare Organizations (TigerConnect)
• Value-Based Care Continues to Loom as the Healthcare Industry’s Cost-Quality Savior (Zynx Health)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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